When I was a kid I asked Santa for the USS Intrepid, back when that was up for sale. All I got in response was a note chiding me for unreasonable expectations and letting me know how many elves were hurt trying to reload the ordnance.

I got a Logistics Support Submarine the next year. But it just wasn't the same.

To Hell with a floating datacenter. Give us a floating Data Haven, a lá Cryptonomicon. (That one wasn't floating but the principle was the same). A nice defensible storage for our critical data. It could be the World's first floating, private bank.;)

Seriously, we can't discuss what options are viable (data centre, offshore pleasure palace, whatever) until we have some idea of the cost of this thing. There's no reserve price so anyone guesstimate what sort of resale value this thing would have? Are

To Hell with a floating datacenter. Give us a floating Data Haven, a lá Cryptonomicon. (That one wasn't floating but the principle was the same). A nice defensible storage for our critical data. It could be the World's first floating, private bank.;)

This would be an absolutely terrible idea because anyone with a few thousand dollars to rub together can use existing underwater UAV technology to sink it. It would be the least defensible data center in history.

Scrap steel is purportedly going for $800 US per/ US ton according to http://www.scrapmonster.com/PricesCharts/Metals/Steel.aspx [scrapmonster.com] I think this is for bare clean steel. I know locally in the US midwest the junk yards are buying scrap steel + iron for $200 US per US ton. Based on this, the 10,000 british ton ship at $200 / ton is worth $2.2 million USD to a dealer who will put a lot of labor into tearing it down. Torn down into just scrap, I would say the ship is worth about $8.8 million.
I don't think $

Having it in your shopping cart is one thing. I suggest you refresh your screen. Sorry to spoil all your fun. But, while you were busy posting about buying it on Slashdot, to get +5 funny.... I bought it.

I need to get that Harrier Jet from Pepsi now. I think it will make a nice accessory to my purchase.

Obviously, anything made of that much steel, and capable of being tugged where you want it, has a floor value as a substantial amount of quality scrap; but I have to wonder if it has much more than that. Given its age and poor condition, refitting it will be fairly expensive and require some expertise. It also presumably lacks any refinements made in carrier design in the past 20-30 years.

Unlike, say, low end armored vehicles, for which there is always demand because even tinpot dictators have even more tinpot rebels to crush with them, aircraft carriers are sort of a "superpower or nothing" weapon. Unless you have the cash to maintain one, the air force to be worth projecting into blue water, and the support/defense/meat-shield carrier group ships to protect the thing, it is nearly useless to you. I would assume, therefore, that your standard "diamond/oil/cocaine/etc. kingpin who buys weapons because his country is a shithole with no internal industry" is basically off the table, unlike the case of some APCs or crates of RPGs or such. On the other hand, even if the ship is actually a good deal for some developing wannabe power, enough military procurement decisions are made as pork/spoils/makework deals that support for just buying the thing, rather than having some native shipyard build one, would seem doubtful, unless a country simply has no such capabilities.

The UK was building to a budget and dreaming of US supported Soviet sub hunting. The Falklands showed what the Exocet missiles could to to that 'dream'.
As a big support ship for black ops vs a new medium sized amphibious assault ships?
Brazil, India, South Korea, Thailand do like to buy the bigger navy club toys.

Are Exocets in the Falklands really a great example? The best they did was to cripple HMS Sheffield, it's not like it even sunk it directly- the Sheffield was afloat for 6 days after being hit but it was the rough seas coupled with the damage and the fact the crew was removed and hence couldn't deal with such problems that eventually took it under. The Atlantic Conveyor, a mere merchant navy ship took two exocets and stayed afloat. Other than the Sheffield they were pretty ineffective, certainly didn't prov

Are Exocets in the Falklands really a great example? The best they did was to cripple HMS Sheffield, it's not like it even sunk it directly- the Sheffield was afloat for 6 days after being hit but it was the rough seas coupled with the damage and the fact the crew was removed and hence couldn't deal with such problems that eventually took it under. The Atlantic Conveyor, a mere merchant navy ship took two exocets and stayed afloat. Other than the Sheffield they were pretty ineffective, certainly didn't prove to be quite the threat that was presumed and of course, the Invincible never took a hit.

Apparently, the Exocet would have been more effective earlier in the war, if it had been set up correct. I gather the fuse was set up to penetrate armor while most targets which were hit were unarmored and small. For some period of time, the missiles passed through the target causing little damage.

By the time, the Exocet was fixed, the UK had air superiority, meaning any (crazy) Argentina pilots had to come in fast and only had one shot at hitting anything.

>Apparently, the Exocet would have been more effective earlier in the war, if it had been set up correct.

I think this is wrong. The Exocet did it's job. The Argentines only had a limited number. (I think 8 or less) by the time the war started. They were also hampered in there ability to search for ships due to equipment maintenance issues. Had they had the missiles en mass and the ability to correctly search for ships, the brits would have been in trouble.

That wasn't the exocet, that were the dumb bombs.. Quite a few ships were hit in San Carlos Water, and the bombs (dropped at low level and high speed) went straight through the lightweight alloy british frigates.The problem with the Sheffield was that she was hit near the control room, and the fire from the remaining fuel set the aluminium structure ablaze.. Even though the missile didn't sink the ship straight away, it did put it completely out of action. Maybe it isn't a smart idea to have the combat cont

Sure, if you don't want to use it as a fixed wing carrier. It would be a cheap way of getting a helicopter assault ship (in the mold of the old USN Iwo Jima class). Considering how India has both cultural and economic ties with the UK, and has a history of buying their old warships... see the Indian carriers Vikrant and Viraat... I wouldn't be shocked to the see the Indians snap this up as a helo-carrying assault ship.

The Invincible class is designed to basically fly only one jet aircraft, the Harrier, plus helicopters. Harriers have a very useful quality for aircraft carrier operations: STOVL, or short takeoff/vertical landing. (They can technically take off vertically, but a fully loaded Harrier burns fuel so fast doing so that it's essentially an airshow stunt, not something practical to do for real missions. For the same reason, they tend to do slow landings rather than vertical, though it's not as bad by landing time since the airplane has expended most of its fuel and/or ordnance and is a lot lighter.) By doing a takeoff roll with the thrust nozzles directed partially downward to add some lift, the Harrier can take off at a much lower airspeed (and therefore a much shorter takeoff roll) than conventional jet aircraft of similar weight and engine performance.

It turns out you can shorten the takeoff roll even further if you add the ramp. This is nice if you're making small aircraft carriers on a budget, as the British were.

There are some carriers out there which use ramps for non-STOVL aircraft, but they're restricted to lighter planes with a high thrust-to-weight ratio.

The big US carriers are designed to operate a wide variety of aircraft, ranging from small and light to large and heavy. Not many of them are STOVL. Even with the long deck, the big ones can't possibly accelerate fast enough to be above stall speed before running out of deck. So US carriers use catapult-assisted takeoff instead. If you look at the launch area of the deck, you can see the catapult slots. There's a mating thingy which sticks up through the slot and pushes on the nose gear of an aircraft during takeoff. It's pulled along the deck by some very powerful machinery.

What's funny (in a non-humorous way) is that the US attempt to build a jump jet, that the UK plans on purchasing, is way behind schedule, over budget and having all kinds of issues [warisboring.com]. Which makes the Harrier, for all its warts, maybe not look quite as bad.

The VTOL variant of the F35 was bound to have problems, who's crazy enough to think it would be easy to build a drive shaft capable of those kind of forces (I know I laughed when they announced the design). Besides the Brits changed their order to the F35C in October.

The article says the ship weighs 10,000 tons. Scrap steel is worth around 15 cents a pound, so the whole ship is only worth around $3M as scrap. They said that they are hoping to get $1.5M for it, but I'm not sure that's realistic after the towing, drydock and labor costs are added in (though I guess if they tow it to some third world country for scrapping, the docking and labor fees would be minimal)

Ship breakers in India and Pakistan prefer the ship to have a working engine so it can be sailed [youtube.com] right up to the scrap yard door. It's then broken up with blowtorches and carried to shore by hand.

I work for a company that does work on private yachts and we joke occasionally about their owners continually trying to out-do each other. The first one to buy an aircraft carrier and refit it for private accommodations will win that battle. Though the stuff their building custom is getting close to the length of HMS Invincible!

Larry Ellison is an avid sailor and seems to have plenty of money. He'd dump a lot of junk from the ship, and then charge folks a fee for just looking at the ship. A Premium fee will allow folks to actually board the ship. Steering the ship, is right out: Larry is always at the helm.

How can an aircraft carrier not win the America's Cup race?

First mate: "Um, Captain, that Norwegian catamaran is getting ahead of us."

The thing is basically gutted. Propellers gone, rudder locked, machinery removed or broken, much of the super structure gone, electrics shot to pieces. It's a floating bathtub. I suppose someone could tow it somewhere, a naval museum or whatever and restore it sufficiently for tours. But I expect it's really destined to be scrapped. It's sad in a way. Looking back on WWII it's a shame all the military hardware which ended up just getting scuttled or dumped overboard and the value it would have had if it had

Regardless of who the winner is, they will simply be offered 2 to 10 x what they paid to sell it to another bidder. And the ship will end up in China. This is the last thing that the brits need to do. And for the last time that an aircraft carrier was sold this way, it was the Russians and it went to the Chinese for a casino. Never turned up as a casino, but CHina now has several backbones done for an aircraft carrier.

Take a good look at her flight deck. This ship is designed for STOL jet aircraft such as Harriers. Conventional jet aircraft such as F14-F16's wouldn't have enough runway to takeoff or land. You could manage a fleet of small Cessnas such as 172/182 aircraft or even aerobatic stuff such as Pit's specials though.

she's too small for the PRC. They're going for carriers easily twice this size. I would have expected india to consider purchasing the ship (as they have in the past) but frankly, the invincible class is small, old and not the sort of thing of interest to the future naval powers. Spain has modernish carriers about the size of invincible, and those would be much easier to buy designs for. Though PRC doesn't need to learn to build carrier systems on this size when they have much bigger russian carriers already, and india is in basically the same situation.

The other thing is this isn't exactly a sale to the highest bidder. Basically the MOD is looking for the best value for the money they can get, and will assess from there. She might be broken up for scrap, if someone can throw together a good deal she'll end up a museum ship (though that would be presumably hard), or any number of other schemes.

I think he is referring to the submarine incident. The HMCS Chicoutimi (the ship formally known as HMS Upholder) was bought by Canada in 2004 and suffered a major fire during its transfer! To my knowledge, the ship is still commissioned but in dry-dock since the incident, awaiting repair.

Obviously not an engineer. Despite converting more of its economy percentage wise to a war economy than anyone else, the UK was basically bankrupted by WW2. Churchill was always being frustrated in his initiatives by not having the money or the resources. And the Allied advance into Germany was stalled, at a crucial point, by lack of logistical support, prolonging the war (summary and bibliography in book by Max Hastings).

They don't need to add to their collection of crappy old carriers, they have enough already. If they want to squander resources on building already outdated 20th century ships, more power to them. The carrier is obsolete in the face of modern supersonic antiship missiles. The last time anyone took a shot at a US carrier was kamikazes. If you're ever in Shanghai be sure to visit the carrier theme park [bobhenneman.info].

Russia - it has been successfully getting rid of the comparable Kiev class which is actually slightly bigger as a ship, just with the same size flight deck and the "spare" taken up by heavy missile armament.

China already has Kiev and Minsk which are considerably better fit for a 3rd world navy (if it develops VTOL) because while they have the same length flight deck they can also carry some v

You are clearly missing the propaganda value of the Inivincible parked as an amusement Park attraction on the Buenos Aires beach-front. That is also one of the few places in the world where it will generate revenue as an attraction as well.

Seeing as she survived despite being posted thousands of miles from home in a warzone that put her in range of a heavily hostile nation equipped with air launched and land launched anti-ship missiles twice (Falklands, Iraq) I'd say the name turned out pretty well for her!

The Royal Navy has had five ships named "Invincible"
1. The first Invincible was a 74 gun ship of the line built in 1765. She was lost in 1801 during a gale after being driven ashore.
2. The second Invincible was another 74 gun ship of the line built in 1809. She was scrapped in 1861.
3. The third Invincible was a central battery ironclad (Audacious class) and was built in 1870. She sank in 1914 while under tow to a scrap yard.
4. The fourth Invincible was a battlecruiser (name ship of the class) and was built in 1906-07. She blew up following a magazine explosion at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
5. The fifth Invincible is the subject of this article.

If it's bought to be used it would only have to be towed to the nearest shipyard willing and capable of refitting it. It's presumably already in a shipyard capable of refitting it, and they might be willing for the right customer and price.

But anyway, I guess the problem with converting this into a city is that there are no windows, this is a war vessel. Staying below the deck for any length of time would probably not be fun. And it would just be too expensive to run. I think it will come though, floating cities.